1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to analyzing audio communications. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and systems for analyzing and transcribing to text audio communications. Even more specifically, the preferred embodiment of the invention relates to a system, method and computer program for using speech recognition at call centers to improve their efficiency and customer satisfaction.
2. Background Art
Call centers are becoming common in today's modern economy. In the operation of such centers, difficulties sometimes arise when a call is transferred from one representative, or rep, to another. To address this difficulty, U.S. patent application 2002/0169606 suggests using speech recognition to assist in call hand-overs in call center environments. Level 1 service reps will assist the caller to the extent possible, and the status of their assistance is captured via speech recognition, resulting in a more efficient hand-over to the level 2 service assistants. This system, however, does not have a mechanism to capture and display visual information that appeared on the screen during the initial assistance, what the level 1 service rep said at the time that particular screens were displayed, and detailed information about what the customer said during the discussion.
In addition, U.S. patent application 2002/016906 proposes using speech recognition to capture the service rep's speech, but no mechanism is proposed to address the issue of how to edit and correct the inevitable speech recognition errors. Further, given that the level 1 reps may not be based in the U.S. (or even if they are), the customer service rep could have an accent that interferes with customer understanding, which is not addressed in the above-identified patent application.
Telephone speech recognition is a growing business. Banks, travel agencies, etc., provide customer services that are supported by speech recognition instead of (or in addition to) touch-tone automation. One key problem is that speech degrades as it is transmitted over analog lines and this negatively impacts speech recognition accuracy. Because of this problem, only limited applications that use relatively small vocabularies and limited dialog grammars have flourished.
Speech recognition performance is much better, however, if it is transmitted through digital networks or high quality analog lines, and most large companies now have internal digital networks. But the customer service bureaus that customers call into are connected to these islands of high quality networks through limited bandwidth lines that degrade the speech quality. It is necessary to find a solution that allows undegraded speech signals to pass to call centers, despite the prevalence of low bandwidth networks.
Another problem with call centers relates to cost effectiveness, and in particular, the cost effectiveness of call centers that are outsourced, or placed in low cost foreign countries. In many of these offshore call centers, the quality of the cost center support is decreasing, but the investment in the CRM system is still quite high. So customers are struggling with the entire cost issue from the point of view of the return on investment. To address this issue, improvements are needed that will increase the cost center effectiveness, keep the labor costs down, but sill keep the efficiency up.
It is well understood in the art that customers who contact a call center with a question about a company's products or services can get very frustrated when they cannot understand the support people they are talking with. This may be due to the support people not having good English language skills, or having an accent that makes it difficult to understand them. The end result is customer frustration, and a possibly huge cost to the brand of the company about whom the customer called.
This requires a solution for the problem that one has a service rep with a phone accent. Then one has the customer on the other side of the telephone call not understanding that service rep.
Call centers can also be looked at from the point of view of customers, and also call center employees, with disabilities. There is the general framework of speech recognition in the call center, so that there is the issue of efficiency as telephone calls are passed off. So, starting from that, one can think about what can be done in order to create job opportunities in call centers for people with disabilities, and then from another side, now that one has the speech recognition capability, what can be done for customers, calling in, that have some sort of disability.